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Category → Bye Bye Mister Nasty Guy! So Long GOP!

By Robert Sexton — Who knows what the future holds. It is a revealing — and it is a relief — that the GOP Convention in 2012 will not feature George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or — gasp! — Sarah Palin.

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The few moderate and remaining “sane” Republicans that will be watching or attending the Republican Convention in 2012 — can take some solace in the fact that the current Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates obviously feel the necessity to distance themselves from past debacles and past bad actors in the Republican party. But all is not as rosy as it seems. Should Romney and Ryan — as I for one expect — go down in defeat in the 2012 Presidential race — what, then, is the future of the GOP?

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The answer, from my perspective — not much. If the current GOP presidential teams falls — then Paul Ryan will certainly be the next rising star of the Republican party. Chris Christie, given the keynote address at the convention this year, has clearly been designated as a potential heir-apparent to Mitt Romney. Ron Paul will be back with a few more zealots — and will cause consternation. Their will probably be the fringie pretenders. McDonald of Virginia will try to cash in on his Tea Party, right wing “chops”. Their will be some attention starved Michelle Bachmans, some Trump-esque attention prostitutes — and a Santorum or Perry or Caine — who like the experience of being on the national stage — and will run again regardless of how realistic their chances actually are. If for no other reason than to shore up — or improve — their popularity back home.

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But it will simply be more of the same thing we had this year from Republicans — in 2016. Short of a right wing fascist coup, a continuing and worsening “Voter ID” law epidemic, or a political or philosophical Renaissance in the GOP think tanks and word-smithing — I don’t think that even all the money in the world as authorized and encouraged by Citizens United will keep the Republican party relevant past the next election or two. You simply cannot work non-st0p 24/7 against the interests of the 98% of the American electorate that will be picking the country’s political leadership. There just aren’t enough 1 or 2 per-centers. And short of a fascist, militarized crack-down on ordinary Americans and democratic politicians — there just isn’t enough populist, humanist “mojo” in the Republican party to give it a significant relevance going forward into the future. It will die hard, of course — and there is lots of money that will try to keep it a player. But the longer the Republicans starkly and overtly curry the favor and campaign contributions of the rich and super rich and work solely for their political and financial benefit — the more it will become apparent to the elderly, women, minorities, the young, the poor, and the disabled — that Republicans not only do not have their best interests at heart and do not particularly feel obligated to do anything that would help make life better for them — but they actually are strenuously working to undermine or dismantle virtually every institution or government program that has these significantly disenfranchised groups as their beneficiaries.